On Wednesday (January 16th), crypto payment processor BitPay announced that in 2018 it had processed over a $1 billion in transactions.
BitPay, which is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, was founded in May 2011 was founded by Tony Gallippi and Stephen Pair. The goal was “to make it easy for businesses to accept bitcoin payments.,” and by September 2013, over 10,000 merchants were accepting Bitcoin (BTC) with the help of BitPay. Currently, the company claims to be “the largest bitcoin payment processor in the world, serving industry-leading merchants on six continents.” Amongst its backers are Index Ventures, Founders Fund, and Felicis Ventures.
BitPay allows businesses to accept two cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. After taking a 1% processing fee, BitPay can settle with the merchant in eight fiat currencies (with “direct bank deposit in 38 countries”) and five cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Gemini Dollar, USD Coin, and Paxos Standard). The option of receiving payment in USDC or GUSD was added on 15 October 2018, and support for settlement in Paxos Standard (PAX) was added on 20 November 2018.
BitPay’s press release says that in 2018 it “processed over a $1 Billion again in payments and set a new record for transaction fee revenue by adding new customers like Dish Networks, HackerOne, and the State of Ohio.” Also, its B2B business “had a record year as it grew almost 255% from the previous year as many law firms, data center providers, and IT vendors signed up to accept Bitcoin.” Another win was hiring “Rolf Haag, Former Western Union and PayPal executive as Head of Industry Solutions responsible for the B2B business.”
Last year, BitPay also managed to “set a record for reducing payment error rates,” with the “dollar volume lost to cryptocurrency payment errors” dropping “from over 8% (in December 2017) to well under 1% of BitPay’s total dollar volume processed.”
Stephen Pair, Co-founder, President and CEO of BitPay, had this to say:
“BitPay’s B2B business continues to grow rapidly as our solution is cheaper and quicker than a bank wire from most regions of the world. To process over a $1 Billion for a second year in a row despite Bitcoin’s large price drop shows that Bitcoin is being used to solve real pain points around the world.”
Sean Rolland, Head of Product of BitPay, said:
“The adoption of support for Payment Protocol wallets has made a big difference for our merchants. Merchants are now able to easily accept Bitcoin payments in a simple easy way without any support issues. This was our biggest request by our enterprise merchants… Bitcoin has the network effect around the world and we are still extremely bullish on Bitcoin and the Bitcoin ecosystem.”
Featured Image Courtesy of BitPay
